


Only Stop At Exits

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Anonymous Sex, Character Death, F/M, Homophobia, M/M, Rape/Non-con References, Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:59:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Blaine sells his body for food, rent, and because he's not worth much else.</p><p>(Warnings apply: character death (minor – ask for details), rape (major – ask for details), underage prostitution (Blaine is 15 at the beginning), casual bondage (minor, not graphic), barebacking (repeated), pegging (once, graphic), STIs<br/>Triggers for the above as well.)</p><p>Also, there's nothing explicitly spoilery about this past The Break Up (4x04), but there is a Tina reference towards the very end. I don't believe it will make much difference after this week's episode (4x11), but you might want to hold off until then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Stop At Exits

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be something fluffy for Yuletide, except I blow at fluffy and gave up to write “hustler!Blaine” instead. This isn’t exactly what I planned, but it’s not _not_ what I planned either. (This makes it sound like there was a plan beyond “anonymous sex”. There wasn’t.) Tense issues, grammar issues, run on sentences and fragmented sentences all come courtesy of me and my lack of beta. (If you read this and you WANT to beta it, feel free to offer! I’ve never used one and I’ve no idea where to look but god knows this needs some crazy TLC.)

Blaine Devon Anderson doesn't like the word 'whore'. He finds it pejorative, unhelpful and unfriendly, irrespective of the myriad ways it applies. Blaine has sex for money, but he is not a whore or an escort or a prostitute, and he’s certainly not a slut, irrespective of what some men like to call him when they tie him up and fuck him raw. He likes the word 'hustler', if he has to pick one, but mostly he tries not to think about it at all. Ignoring the things men do to his body has become second nature to him. He remembers the first time someone gave him $20 (and enough tequila to drop an elephant, probably) to use his throat, remembers the weight and feel of a grown man's dick on his tongue and Jesus he'd thought he wanted it. He was 15, and rebelling on the back of a disastrous dance that he'd only just had the cast removed from his wrist after and his parents' casual disregard for his sexual and mental health. If they thought he was only a VD time bomb looking for somewhere to happen, he could be that boy. So he'd dressed in the tightest jeans he owned (almost unhealthily tight but his ass looked great and that's what counted; his ass needed to outweigh his youth, because Blaine has never had a firm grasp of how beautiful his face is, or of the saleability of his eyes) and a fitted Henley he was close to outgrowing, and snuck a ride to Lima's only gay bar before charming a man into getting him in with his hands and his smile (and maybe a kiss or several). The man had taken him by the hand and led him to the bathroom, and Blaine had been on his knees before he even really understood what was expected of him. 15 year old Blaine had had to rely on free porn and Google and some vocal training to take it without choking or biting, his hands grabbing at the man's hips as he tried to remember how to breathe. As it turned out, come tasted bitter on his tongue, the guy held his mouth closed until he swallowed, and $20 made him feel dirty. He didn’t – couldn’t – speak when the man drove him home, dropped him off three blocks from his house because Blaine wouldn’t give him a street address, and Blaine scrubbed his tongue with his toothbrush for what felt like hours. He went back a week later and, the second time, he asked for $30 and insisted on a condom, since no amount of vomit had made him feel like there wasn't come rolling in his stomach and spitting wasn't an option with how far he could let a man into his throat. He never got the guy’s name (not that it mattered) and he wasn’t happy about the condom so Blaine dropped to $25 and felt a lot better about the whole experience. 

From there, it was easy to fall into a routine of sucking men he believed were willing to turn a blind eye to his age for cash. Time and distance have taught him that it was less of a blind eye and more of a deliberate fetish, but forty bucks a night kept him quiet then and he couldn’t identify them besides. To Blaine’s adolescent and confused mind, it paid for his clothes and books without him having to beg his parents for more than they were already doing (prep school in Westerville cost - as his father regularly reminded him - an awful lot of money, and he could make do with the clothes he had because he was in uniform most of the time). Blaine kept his head down at school, didn’t make a scene, and joined the glee club because he liked buzz of performing, of being admired and appreciated, and because the vocal training helped him learn to relax his throat at will. When he returned to the public school system his junior year (for a _boy_ , his mother had said, with biting and bitter disdain, as if penning him in a redbrick institution full of cute boys in box cut blazers might have somehow _cured_ him), his reputation preceded him, his mouth and non-existent gag reflex securing the McKinley glee club their sectional win.

All things considered, Blaine thinks he did well to get to his senior year with only one serious case of gonorrhoea just before he turned 18 (and damn, that had been fun to explain to both his mom and the nurse when he’d had to get treatment for it, until he’d remembered that in all honesty his mom had been expecting this since he was 13 so he’d just muttered gay and sex and she’d actually fucking _winked_ at the nurse at the clinic when she’d said he was gay and well really, what else could you expect?). He graduated with a clean 4.0, a sound knowledge of the classics and an unhealthy ability to quote The Great Gatsby backwards (partly because he felt he understood Gatsby’s need to change himself into what other people expected of him at the cost of his own happiness, and partly because he understood the green light across the harbour as well).

He would never, of course, have described himself as unhappy, but he certainly wasn’t without his regrets. Letting Kurt walk away was definitely on the list.

 

Kurt Elizabeth Hummel blazed into Blaine’s life during his sophomore year of high school. He had sparkled in ways Blaine had always dreamed of, and Blaine had put on a show of being confident and assured in his own sexuality. Dalton had helped him with that, at least, and Blaine knew exactly how to smile and act as if he knew what he was doing. He’d tried desperately hard not to love Kurt but the innocent allure of his bright blue eyes and the iridescent purity of his countertenor charmed him in the end. Blaine has known real love precisely once in his life, and he knew even then that Kurt would be the only boy he would ever want. When Kurt left Dalton and begged Blaine to go with him, back to public school and the whispers and the ridicule, Blaine had eventually capitulated and emerged victorious and, for almost a year, he gave up the easy money and pretended, for Kurt’s sake, that he had never set foot inside Lima’s only gay bar when his replacement at Dalton had invited them. He danced with Sebastian, avoided making eye contact with a single person who wasn’t Kurt, and pretended to be drunk on one beer so that Kurt wouldn’t suspect anything when he found himself hanging off the arm of a burly bear of a man as he tried to explain that he was there with his boyfriend - _boyfriend_ , seriously - and not working... Kurt rescued him with his jacket over his arm, and turned Blaine down flat when he tried to haul him into the car.

Blaine has made love to and with precisely one person in his life as well. It wasn’t that night, but it was with Kurt. The first time was after their opening night in the fall musical (he played Tony in West Side Story, and Kurt - too effeminate to make a believable Tony, which Blaine had tried to kiss away with moderate success - had been cast as Officer Krupke), when Kurt had said he just wanted to go back to Blaine’s house, which was a safe, sensible option, with Blaine’s parents ignoring the existence of their gay son in favour of another trip to Fiji, and they’d stripped each other slowly naked, admiring the hard planes and angles of one another’s bodies with hands and eyes and tongues and mouths, working out the ways their bodies fit together, Blaine’s thighs parting for the heavy weight of Kurt above him as they rocked together. It lacked any sense of finesse, but they achieved their objective and Blaine considered that his virginity taken in a way he hadn’t before, no matter how many dicks he had in his mouth or his hands. Being with Kurt felt different, _was_ different, in every way that counted. Their last time was the night before Kurt left for New York in the September of Blaine’s senior year, when Blaine had almost begged to feel Kurt inside of him again and Kurt’s hands had shaken with nerves they hadn’t felt together in months as he opened Blaine up. When he’d reached for a condom, Blaine had gripped his wrist and shaken his head and said no, no, he wanted to _feel_ him. He wanted to still feel him at Thanksgiving, when they’d see each other again, and could top the ache up until Christmas...

As it turned out, old habits die hard and a friend of a friend on Facebook asked Blaine over in the October, ostensibly to study, but Blaine wasn’t stupid enough to believe that might actually be the case. He wore a simple shirt that clung in all the right places, and evaluated the cut of his jeans objectively, and told his mother he’d be home before ten. He didn’t expect being fucked by Eli to make him feel as dirty as it did and Eli at least had the decency to ask him what was wrong, to make _jokes_ about it, before handing him his jacket and kissing his cheek with a casual, “We should do this again.” Blaine nodded mutely, threw up in a garbage can on the way home, and tried not to think about the crumpled $40 in his pocket. He made his personal Facebook page entirely private after that, though, and set up a separate one for the boy he became when he went out. That boy wore his hair product free, drank until his limbs loosened, and had a beguiling virginal smile for strangers and a knowing wink for regulars, and an almost endless supply of condoms hidden in a concealed compartment in his sock drawer. The Friday night version of Blaine Anderson had a lot of “friends”. The regular one holding down the lead soloist role in the New Directions and maintaining his GPA despite the casual prostitution didn’t have many at all.

In retrospect, that might have been the problem.

 

Blaine is a people pleaser. He seeks validation through other people. He has always been, and continues to be, an unreliable narrator of his own worth. Once he learned the things men would say to him when he was naked and pliant (and compliant), there was really no turning back.

He debated for a long time leaving Ohio for college, but the only other thoughts he had were to head for the West Coast and San Francisco or Los Angeles, or to head east for New York City and one Kurt Hummel. Thinking about Kurt hurt, though, and California seemed too far away in terms of relative experience (albeit a counterculture of easy casual sex didn’t seem entirely adverse), so he applied to Columbus and, to appease his mother, he submitted a half-assed application to study in Michigan as well. Failing that, he figured he’d go to community college and see about reapplying in the fall. He got early acceptance to Columbus anyway (a flawless record and an essay packed with buzzwords like “gay” and “minority” and “homophobic attack” apparently opened a lot of doors) and moved into a room with a guy called Anthony. Starting the year as he meant to go on – his opening salvo had also included a declaration of his orientation – had left Anthony looking bemused, the boy having barely had time to put his belongings on the remaining bed. After that, Blaine joined the campus LGBT Alliance and made himself as known and accessible as possible to anyone who may be interested in him.

Blaine remained no stranger to anonymous restrooms but kept better tabs on his own sexual health. He knew the names of the nurses at the clinic he frequented every month, and laughed easily when one (Marc, who had great teeth and a cute ass) laughed and said he was far too pretty to be paying for it already. Blaine was fairly sure he was making a joke, because Blaine was pretty much a regular, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to turn it around. “Oh honey,” Blaine said, his best show smile breaking through, “I’m selling.” Marc’s smile was sad but non-judgemental as he ran through a list of safety precautions with Blaine again.

“How old are you, Blaine?” he asked, and Blaine shrugged his shoulders.

“Legal,” he said, and then widened his eyes imperceptibly, feigning charmed innocence, “Unless you prefer not?”

Marc nodded, and completed the rest of the paperwork quietly. “You know the score,” he said, resting an easy hand on Blaine’s thigh. “Results in-”

“-A couple of days, sure. Thanks, man.” Blaine grabbed for his bag and hauled it onto his shoulder before pausing and meeting Marc’s steady stare. “Eighteen,” he said quietly. And then, to fill the silence, “Which you knew. Because it says so on that piece of paper. Look, Marc, I – it’s been a while. It’s not ideal and it’s not what I imagined, but it’s what I’m good at.”

“I’m sure you’re good at other things as well,” Marc shrugged and blinked forget-me-not blue eyes at him and Blaine thought – for a moment – of the other people who had told him much the same thing. His best friend Wes, when he’d accidentally found Blaine’s Facebook page, had sent him a three page email that detailed every one of Blaine’s attributes, not one of which had been his ass (and which Blaine had written off, because his ass is his best attribute, thank you, and if Wes were gay he’d understand that fact), and Kurt had made him feel infinitely special when he was 16, when he’d had his face buried between Blaine’s thighs as he explored with his fingers and his tongue, finding new ways to make Blaine writhe and moan and come, and then there was Cooper, who had spent Blaine’s formative years making him feel insignificant and the last two trying to make it up with regular emails and phone calls and, critically, one conversation about casual sex that made Blaine choke on his croissant and blush beet red until Cooper flat out asked him about how much experience he had and Blaine stammered through a curt denial.

(Cooper hadn’t been even vaguely appeased, as he recalls, and Blaine had muttered about how Cooper didn’t understand being his age and gay and largely ignored, and Cooper had said, calmly, that he sat by Blaine’s bed for two days while their parents came back from Europe when he was 14 and medically unconscious while his head healed.

“How many, Blaine?”

“I – Only the one. Just Kurt.”

“You’ve only had sex with Kurt.”

Not even a question.

“Maybe... like, oral. I-“

Cooper looked vaguely sad and repeated his first question and Blaine, contrite and ashamed (neither for the first time), said, “It’s not like I’m keeping score.” Besides, in his own head, he had only had sex with Kurt (and, maybe, Eli). Mostly, men had sex with him.)

He shook his head at Marc anyway, smiled buoyantly, and backed away until it was safe to turn and virtually run, except that Blaine Anderson did not run away from things. Not anymore. He just walked really very fast in the opposite direction to conflict.

 

As his college career progressed, Blaine started trading his body for favours. It started with the need for a two day extension on a paper he’d already been granted an extra week on, extended through a particularly benevolent TA whom he met through the Alliance and knew liked him _that way_ , and ended up with him over the desk of faculty head, white knuckled and numb, when he needed his mid-term grade lifting from an A- to a straight A. He’d only been 70% sure that the man was even gay (thanks to another talkative and helpful TA who’d given him course notes for the semester in exchange for letting him bind his wrists and gag him and fuck him bare which, he said, his boyfriend wouldn’t let him do after eight months together), and less sure even than that that he wouldn’t be reported and excluded, but the man had run his eyes hungrily over Blaine’s narrow hips before literally stroking his thumb over Blaine’s full lips and the sharp swoop of his cheekbone. Blaine could feel the edge of the desk bruising his thighs, and found himself biting the inside of his lip to keep the edge of discomfort at bay, groaning as he turned his face away from the hand gripping his shoulder for leverage, wishing his could tune out the harsh, ragged grunts of the man pounding into him, wishing he didn’t have to listen to cliché aphorisms about his body.

It was over almost embarrassingly quickly, really, and Blaine silently thought about how dirty old perverts probably don’t get their hands on boys like him too often, even as he patted down his hair and rearranged the pulled collar of his Henley. Standing back from the desk as his professor resumed his seat, face flushed and hands shaking, he coughed quietly and said, “So. That grade?”

His teacher looked startled when he looked up to find Blaine still in his office, and Blaine narrowed his eyes, fully prepared to argue, when he got a nod. “Consider it done, Blaine.”

The sick feeling that rolled through him wasn’t a new one either. It wasn’t shame (he wasn’t remotely ashamed of anything he’d done because, he figured, you worked with what you had and life, a judicial amount of boxing, and a good dash of plain old fate had conspired to leave him with a body that people wanted, a face people believed, and a clear ability to not let his actual personality get caught up in the things he did to survive), but it was distaste. He’d never heard his name sound seedier. When men said it usually, it was on a wave of bliss as they curled into him, reverent and hungry, even when they were exchanging actual cash for his time. All things considered, he preferred it when his professor referred to him as Anderson. As he walked away, bruised and aching and in desperate need of a scalding hot shower, he hoped he could change courses. Or maybe colleges.

Instead, he learned to accept that an A- wouldn’t change his overall grade when he graduated, as long as he didn’t make a habit of them, and kept up his relationship with a couple of the TAs who seemed most inclined to trade him notes for access to his body. The one who liked to tie him up would answer his questions and proof read his essays as well, and gave him pointers on how best to deal with his professors. Blaine was almost inclined to call it a relationship, except the guy had been going steady with his long term boyfriend for longer than Blaine had even been at college and Blaine wasn’t really remotely attracted to him (although the guy had some amazing shoes, he’d concede that). Blaine could see the attraction of being restrained, though. He felt cared for in exciting and different ways with his movement restricted and his participation minimal, and the TA (Ethan, or Ewan, or Iain, Blaine wasn’t really sure about that either) never did anything to him without explaining first. Blaine safe worded just once in their time together, on a scene they’d played a dozen times, but Iain (Blaine was maybe 84% sure it was Iain) untied him quickly and helped him come back down without recrimination, and Blaine did something he rarely did with anyone – he kissed him square on the mouth with a whispered apology.

By the time he graduated (with honors, thank you, and on his own merit, not because he screwed his way into it), Blaine had a working knowledge of light bondage, an impressive size kink, more than one actual friend, and a burning desire to get the fuck out of Ohio.

 

There was only one direction that Blaine considered to be an option when he left his home state. He packed what he wanted to keep, sold what he didn’t, and had two suitcases and a lot of memories with him when he boarded a plane for New York. As a last act of good will, his parents bought him the ticket and his mom came with him to the airport. There were tears in her eyes when she hugged him goodbye, and he swallowed back the bitterness because if she’d ever cared about his existence this much when he was 15 and actually needed her, perhaps he could have been good enough for Kurt when he had him.

The first thing Blaine did in New York was hook himself up with a dingy fourth floor apartment that came replete with dubious stains, a leaky tap and a gas stove that may or may not have blown the whole building sky high if he ever used it. The neighbourhood was shady at best, but there was a drugstore on the corner of the street and the crime report said no one has been shot dead in at least six months. The journey into the city of his dreams (or his dreams since Kurt moved there, anyway) was longer than he would have liked, but if it meant he could afford the rent without having to get a roommate then it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

The second thing he did was delete his public profile on Facebook. He hadn’t used it in a long time anyway. College kept him otherwise occupied towards the end, and he was too old to be getting hook ups and work that way. In its place, he sets up profiles on other websites and spent his first real night in New York with cold pizza (it was hot when he ordered it, to be fair), cheap wine and an arsenal of hard and soft kinks that he only had to tick boxes to say he was or was not prepared to delve into. After that, he emailed his new contact details to a few people that he had no objection to keeping in contact with, and then sent an email to Wes as well to let him know that he was out of Ohio and living the life in the Big Apple. “To be fair,” he wrote at the end, “I only just got here and it’s a little overwhelming. But I’ve no doubt I’ll make new friends very quickly.” He knew Wes would understand the subtext and, whilst he also knew it wouldn’t stop him worrying, at least he would know Blaine wasn’t going to struggle to survive.

The third thing he did – albeit closely adjacent to the second – was to drop his first name from every single profile. Blaine decided that it would be easier to keep himself separate from the things he did if his clients weren’t calling him by his given name. He figured Devon worked just as well and had the bonus of being partly his, and wouldn’t feel so alien to hear drip from the tongues of men paying him by the hour to fuck him open and loose and pliable.

After that, living in New York City was more about settling into a routine than anything. He found three coffee places he liked and got himself a job at one of them. The hours weren’t great but they worked well with his personal needs. The woman he worked with most regularly at some point figured out he was gay and made it her personal mission to get him laid since, she said, it would make him less uptight. Blaine almost laughed before saying a lack of sex really wasn’t his problem. Or hers. “C’mon, Blainers,” she cajoled, watching as he made hearts in cappuccino foam. He grinned at her and wiped his hands on his apron before handing the coffee over with a smile and a thank you.

“A lack of _good_ sex, perhaps,” he said, turning back to her and fixing her with an easy grin.

“I know that one,” she said, sighing dramatically. “All those boys, none of them have a clue what to do with it.”

Blaine laughed, actually laughed, and tugged her hair. “Don’t worry about me, Vee,” he said softly. “I get plenty of offers.”

She didn’t look even vaguely surprised and sighed heavily. “Yeah,” she said, her face one of utter chagrin. “I mean, I’d totally tap that, even if I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere near it.” She pinched his ass as he turned away from her again, another customer entering the shop, making him squeak and laugh as he asked how he could help.

 

Somewhere around the six month mark – work finally picking up, money finally coming in – Blaine received an email from “Roxie Hart”. It didn’t say much but it did ask him to meet for lunch. Blaine’s profiles all clearly stated his orientation as gay and he’d never taken on a woman before - he at least assumed that “Roxie” was female - so he was intrigued to say the least when she used the word “proposition”. He agreed to at least meet her once, so she could check him out before involving her partner, and she said she could do Wednesday, around 2, at a bar that Blaine had to Google before getting back to her.

He was surprised when “Roxie” turned out to be Santana Lopez, but she’d only looked him up and down once, appraisingly, and said, “You’re Devon? That really only figures. I always thought that ass was wasted on Kurt.” Blaine blanched and almost left, but she reached for his hand. “Joking, Blaine. God. Calm down. Sit down.”

“You always struck me more as a Velma Kelly,” he said vaguely, sinking into a chair and ordering overpriced San Pellegrino with a twist of lemon. “I could totally buy you shooting your husband’s face off in a jealous rage.”

In the back of his mind, he knew he should be embarrassed that she now knew what he did for money, how he managed to afford his rent when he was ostensibly single and working as a barista (according to his cautiously maintained personal Facebook). He wasn’t. After all, she came to him with a proposition and if she knew about him then he also knew she was willing to pay a hustler to be her and her girlfriend’s third wheel. On some basic level, Blaine knew that Santana would at least always make sure he was safe. She’d always been weirdly protective of him when they were at school.

“Except it’d be my wife.”

Blaine nodded absently, wracking his brain for her girlfriend’s name, and then looked at her for a long minute. “Britt?” She nodded, showed him the ring. “I’m happy for you.” All he could think about was his last night with Kurt, and his first slide back to this when he couldn’t make do with Skype and didn’t have access to the vast array of toys he had now.

“Yeah. I can tell from the way you look like you might throw up on my Jimmy Choos.” Her voice was gentler than he remembered, though, her hands more reassuring.

“Sorry. I should – Sorry.” He pushed his chair back, ready to leave, and Santana gripped his wrist.

“Sit.” Blaine dropped back into his chair, blinked at her owlishly, and she smiled in a way that seemed suddenly utterly familiar. She looked like a shark that had smelled blood. “Are you this responsive in bed?” He nodded and shrugged and continued to meet her eyes. “Look. This is for Britt. She likes to see a guy get nailed now and then and her birthday is coming up. I’m game if you are.”

Blaine narrowed his eyes, took a sip of his water, and listed his conditions.

They didn’t meet regularly outside of his work for them (the odd dinner, when Britt said she’d like to see him with his clothes on sometimes or when Santana had a bad week and needed an impartial ear to rant at), but it was better knowing he would at least be with friends when Santana would text him a date and time. As promised, Brittany enjoyed watching him beg for release, Santana driving into him with a hard black strap on that stimulated her as well, while Britt – softer, with beautiful blonde hair and almond shaped eyes that locked with Blaine’s as she stroked his hair back from his face – held his head in her lap and told him he was glorious, and doing so well, and he thought, somewhere in the fog of lust and need, that she reminded him of someone, even as her wife had her hands on his inner thighs, or gripping his balls in a vice, and he needed to come.

“Do you like this, Blainers?” Santana asked, voice sultry and mocking and he nodded raggedly.

“Please. Fuck. I need-“

“I know, baby.”

She pulled out of him slowly, and he practically sobbed at the emptiness, but then Brittany’s hands were stroking over his chest and shoulders, and he saw love in her eyes as she leaned down to kiss him, their mouths messy where she was upside down, and then the softer pressure of a vibrator being pushed back inside of him, the low buzz as it was switched on, and his spine arching as it was angled against his prostate, and that soft, soft voice, telling him he could touch himself now. He needed to know what it was she used, because between the toy inside of him, his own hand and the tongue flicking across his perineum, Blaine almost blacked out as he came.

Blaine had no idea how long he was out for, but he woke up to Santana’s hand rubbing soothing circles on his hip. “Blaine,” Santana whispered into his ear as he blinked back into consciousness. “C’mon, short stack. There’s breakfast on the counter. And I’m not paying for you falling asleep.”

Blaine groaned and rolled into a sitting position, wincing as he did so. Santana didn’t fool around. It was another reason why he liked her. She didn’t question whether or not he could take it. She knew he could. “Breakfast?”

“And a shower. And then you go home, because you confuse Britt when you stay over.”

“Wasn’t staying over.”

“No, you weren’t. And here it is, 0600 hours, and you’re still in my spare bedroom.”

“Mm,” he groaned, and stretched until his spine cracked. “Clothes?”

“Like I haven’t seen your hobbit ass naked. In the drier. Eat. Wash. I’ll bring you your jeans. Have I ever told you you should wear more blue? It suits you.”

“Did you know Kurt used to call you Satan? You’re not. I like you.”

“B, you’re hungover and adorable and gayer than Christmas. Just fucking wash.”

Blaine nodded laconically and smiled and pushed himself to his feet, wobbled for a second as his head cleared. “Not hungover. Wasn’t drunk.”

Santana’s smile was beautiful and her eyes sparkled as she hugged him gently. “Then we’ll call it subspace and be done. Blueberry pancakes. I love you, too.”

Blaine left their apartment sated, with the link to the vibrator Santana used on him texted to his phone, and an indecipherable ache low inside his chest. Nonetheless, he was happier than he usually was on the morning commute back to his own apartment. He liked Brittany and Santana because they quite evidently cared about him. He enjoyed the look on people’s faces when he said that actually, yes he had had sex with a woman. He didn’t – and still does not – feel the need to specify that he’s never had “straight” sex with one (he doesn’t think he could; objectively, he thinks Santana is beautiful but the idea of reversing their positions so he’s pushing into the softness of her body makes his blood run cold and his palms sweat). In all honesty, he has never really questioned his sexuality, no matter how many men have paid for his mouth and his hands and his ass. Similarly, he still knows what he personally enjoys. He has topped (mostly with Kurt), but he isn’t a natural switch. Blaine loves the feeling of being fucked open and adored. He loves feeling wanted and desired and penetrated, and he’s not sure but he thinks, fuck it, he’ll blame his father for telling him, repeatedly, that this isn’t how real men behave. Every single time a man comes inside of him or on him, Blaine feels the rush of adrenaline because he is all man and he needs this, this surge of feeling, because Blaine’s old man wouldn’t know what it took to be a man if he’d been handed the fucking rule book when he hit puberty. He was still thinking these thoughts when he pushed open his front door with a heavy sigh, to be greeted by his pissed off cat and, once he plugged his iPhone back in, 3 missed calls and a message from a voice he hadn’t heard in years.

 

Sebastian’s voice hadn’t changed at all. Older, perhaps, its timbre richer, but he knew it from the moment the ‘A’ of Anderson dripped into his voicemail. “Anderson,” he said, “I’m going to be in town for a few days from the third of next month. Give me a call. I heard you’re a sure thing. I doubt that’s true but it would be good to see a familiar face. And a cute one at that.” Blaine bristled because he was not ‘a sure thing’. He wasn’t when Sebastian knew him, and he wasn’t now either. Blaine was out a lot, yes, and with a lot of different men, but he wasn’t throwing himself around. He’d moved from the ratty apartment to be closer to the city, and now that work was constant he had given up the job at the coffee shop as well, although he’d kept Veronica’s number because she had been a blast. He called Sebastian back to tell him this exact thing, only to be surprised by Sebastian actually answering.

“Hey, B,” he said and Blaine could feel his face settling into a scowl.

“Seb,” he responded and then, “Look, I don’t know what-“

“Blaine, don’t get uppity. I just wanted you to call back. I know what you are.”

“’What I am’?” Blaine felt himself parroting back, making air quotes that Sebastian couldn’t see but he hoped could hear.

“You’re not exactly low profile, are you? Those are some swanky parties you’re attending.”

“Working.”

“They’re some swanky parties you’re working.”

Blaine remained silent for a long minute and sighed. “I work hard, Sebastian. Sometimes I get taken out.”

“Shown off.”

“Does it matter?”

“No. So I’m in town from the 3rd. I’d like to... take you out.”

“Fuck you, Sebastian.”

“Kinda, yeah.”

And that was exactly how Blaine found himself sitting in the lobby of a hotel, staring at the red soles of his Leboutins, waiting for Sebastian to come down from his room. Blaine hadn’t felt uncomfortable in these hotels for a long time, but somehow he did now. After hanging up on Sebastian and Sebastian calling him back, he’d learned that Seb really was only in town for a few days, for bank meetings and board meetings and one last hurrah, and then he was flying back to Paris. “You’d love Paris at this time of year,” he said at one point, and Blaine could almost hear the unspoken offer hanging in the air. Instead of responding, he said he’d miss New York in the winter if he left her now and Sebastian’s laugh had been infectious. “You boys and that damn city.”

He felt Sebastian’s hand on his shoulder before he saw him approaching, lost in introspection and the thought of Paris in the fall. He looked up sharply to find Sebastian smiling at him, his hand reaching to cup Blaine’s cheek as Blaine pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Don’t pretend like we’re lovers. Or friends.” Sebastian lowered his hand slowly and nodded. The Blaine he remembered had been far more tactile, and far more trusting. It had been a long time, though, and Sebastian couldn’t begin to imagine what Blaine had seen and done, so he let it go.

“I figured we’d get dinner first,” he said instead.

“Dinner’s fine.”

Sebastian took them to an expensive seafood restaurant that Blaine hadn’t been to before. He explained more about his business trip and how he was heading back to his actual life as soon as they were done. (“Husband?” Blaine asked, searching his face for answers, and Sebastian shook his head with a wry smile on his still slightly weasely features. “No. Still just a lot of pretty boys like you.” Blaine felt something curl inside of him as he looked away again.) He was sipping a vodka martini and staring into a lobster tank as he spoke, and Blaine still felt incomparably small and provincial beside him, like even blending into New York hadn’t made him any less small town than he had been sitting next to Kurt in the Lima Bean, stammering his way through excuses about why he couldn’t go to Scandals. Gesturing to one of the larger lobsters in the tank, Sebastian indicated his preference and watched as it was pulled from the water and taken away before turning back to Blaine.

“Okay, Devon, you win,” Sebastian said at length, turning to face him. Blaine felt his stomach bottom out, his appetite fleeing. “Let’s not pretend anything at all.” Blaine blinked cautiously and turned his face back to the water and the remaining crustaceans. “And you’re still playing the blushing schoolboy. You’re fucking precious.”

“Not really,” Blaine muttered and then, straightening and pulling himself to his full height (still only just above Sebastian’s shoulder), he said, “And don’t call me that. I - we’re not friends, but don’t call me Devon. If we’re doing this it’s business, I still need you to pay me, but at least you should pay _me_. Not him.”

Sebastian arched a manicured eyebrow and nodded his head. “There’s the Blaine I always suspected existed.”

“Fuck you.”

“I thought you liked it better the other way, but I’m flexible.”

Blaine snorted air out through his nose, but the ice was broken. “You’re buying me dinner as well. I’m not a cheap date.” He was smiling again now, though, body loosening, safe in the knowledge that Sebastian knew exactly what this was. As dinner progressed, he realised that time and distance had improved Sebastian dramatically. He was still arrogant and assertive (and, ultimately, predatory), but he was less intimidating. He got Blaine fuzzy drunk on champagne cocktails, and watched as Blaine picked at scallops, and paid the bill without even checking the price. Blaine stumbled slightly as he stood, giggled – actually _giggled_ \- as he put his hand out to balance himself, and didn’t protest when Sebastian’s hand wrapped around his waist and curled low over his hip. They hadn’t discussed price, they hadn’t discussed Blaine’s hard limits, but Blaine wasn’t worried. Sebastian was rich, ridiculously rich, and Blaine was confident that he’d get his money without getting hurt.

Sebastian wasn’t exactly what Blaine thought he would be, in the end. Blaine had expected him to be demanding, forceful, urgent, even, but he wasn’t. He’d been reverent, as if having Blaine was something he’d only dreamt of, even if he was paying him now. Blaine found himself almost lost in the feel of Sebastian’s hands on his skin, in the way Sebastian’s lips traced his muscles and the tendons of his thighs, in his tongue mapping the hollows between his bones. It was almost like being with a lover, and Blaine couldn’t remember how to separate that part of himself as Sebastian’s tongue licked him open, Sebastian morphing into Kurt in Blaine’s head until Blaine was tangling his fingers in the waves of Sebastian’s hair and begging for more. He almost didn’t hear the click as Sebastian undid the lube, replacing his tongue with his fingers as he crawled back up Blaine’s body and hovered above him before leaning down to press a kiss to Blaine’s throat and jaw and cheek.

“You don’t even know how beautiful you are,” he whispered, working a third finger inside of Blaine, and Blaine turned his face away as Sebastian moved back to sit between Blaine’s thighs. “Can you – on your stomach, Blaine.”

Blaine groaned as Sebastian pulled out of him, eyelids fluttering closed as he tried to assemble his limbs and turn onto his stomach. In the end, Sebastian’s hands helped turn him gently before spreading his thighs, two fingers sliding back inside of him as Sebastian explored his back with his tongue and teeth. Blaine was almost sobbing with need before Sebastian fucked into him slowly, holding back only long enough to let himself adjust to the feel of Blaine around him before settling into a gentle rhythm. He wasn’t desperate or hard, and Blaine only remembered feeling this cherished once before, a long time before, and he couldn’t let himself think about Kurt when Sebastian was paying him to be here, now. Blaine could only be relieved that Sebastian didn’t seem to require his active participation, just that his body remain soft and pliable.

Blaine’s breath caught as Sebastian pulled out of him again and rolled him onto his back. He felt more drunk than he had at the restaurant, his hands reaching almost blindly for Sebastian, keening low in his throat to have him back. He’d missed this feeling of being cherished and, as Sebastian pushed back inside of him again, his hands pushing Blaine’s knees apart and back toward his chest, Blaine could feel himself falling apart, his hands clawing above his head to grip at the headboard, Sebastian’s strokes inside of him longer and harder as he built towards his climax.

Blaine had never come this way before, without even really being touched, and usually it wasn’t about him getting off anyway. He had a few clients who liked to pretend he was more than what he was, who treated him as well as they knew how, but even then it took work. Sebastian barely touched him throughout, but Blaine found himself groaning his name as he arched into it, as Sebastian released his legs and he wrapped them around his waist, drawing him deeper, deeper...

Sebastian dropped his head to Blaine’s shoulder as he came, hips stilling suddenly as the fire burning low inside of him ripped through Blaine. As he came back down, Blaine shifted beneath him, whispering for him to move, to please work him through his, and, obliging, he shifted his hips until the urgent clamp of Blaine’s muscles around him told they were done, Blaine’s heels digging into his ass as he worked through the tension and collapse of his own orgasm, a soft, sad laugh escaping him as he came back down, blinking tears from his honey eyes.

Pulling out of him, Sebastian rolled the condom off himself and waited for Blaine to swipe at his eyes and push himself back upright before touching him again. “Blaine?”

“Don’t.”

“What are you thinking?”

Blaine turned his face away before pulling his knees up to his chest and burying his face in his arms. When Sebastian stroked a hand down his side and over his hip, he flinched and looked up with bitter resignation.

“Blaine...”

“That this would have been easier if you’d actually hurt me.”

“Because now...”

Blaine’s breath hitched and he shuddered as he held it back. “I miss him, Seb.”

Sebastian didn’t speak again, only hauled the top sheet off the bed and settled them beneath the others, pulling Blaine to his chest as he stroked his hair. “You’re allowed to miss him,” he whispered softly. Blaine didn’t speak again before sleep overtook him, cocooned in expensive cotton and the heat of another body.

When the morning sun finally woke him, Blaine found his clothes folded on the end of the bed, and a money clip with $2000 in it. He understood why Sebastian paid in cash, but not why he’d paid him that much for easy sex and Blaine breaking down on him. He pulled enough to cover his dinner the previous night out of it and pushed the rest into the inside pocket of his jacket before checking for anything he’d left behind and slipping from Sebastian’s room and life.

When he got home, he ran himself a hot bath and ordered himself take out Chinese food (butterfly prawns and everything else he read and decided he wanted, which ended up being enough food for 6, open cartons of noodles and rice surrounding him as he fed prawn tails to his cat) before drinking every drop of alcohol he had in his apartment. Lying down on his bed, he waited for the wave of sickness to pass. He hadn’t felt like this since Eli when he was 17. Sleeping with Sebastian hadn’t been cheating, not now, not with so much water passed, but it still felt to him like he was betraying someone. In the end, he reasoned, as sleep and alcohol finally overtook his brain, it was really only himself.

 

Blaine would have been happy to continue his life the way it was going until he was too old or too jaded to continue, but everything changed on his 29th birthday. He’d decided on his 28th birthday that he needed to invest time in himself, which mostly meant making sure that occasionally someone took care of his needs as well. That birthday had also come with the bitter realisation that he couldn’t play 17 forever and that ship had definitely sailed. There were things he could do with his tongue and his hips that no teenager should know, and besides that he’d found a single grey hair and decided life was over. (There hadn’t been one since, but it didn’t change a thing: Blaine was no longer 17, wide eyed and innocent and he wanted someone to care for _him_ for a change.)

Looking back on it, it wasn’t what happened that hurt him the most. It had been telling people afterwards. It had been the fact he couldn’t stay in his apartment by himself anymore, that he could swear the footsteps on the landing stopped outside of his door every time. It had the month of PEP he’d undergone, just in case, and the inevitable phone calls to Cooper and then his mom, because he needed somewhere to be that wasn’t New York and the memories it dredged up whenever he went out. It had been saying the actual words “I was raped” to his mother, and hearing her disparaging response (“Can people like you even be raped?”), and having to choke out that he’d obviously missed the memo where it was reserved for good Christian girls now, and then sobbing as he whispered that really, he just needed his mom and somewhere to go...

It had been meeting with a therapist in Ohio and detailing the whole night as he remembered it...

_Just after midnight (and therefore officially his birthday) he’d had a blow up with Crish (who was 37 and Tamil and Blaine had loved his skin, because it was soft and cared for and it reminded Blaine of Kurt), who had thrown Devon back at him and left Blaine reeling on the dance floor alone, and as he watched Crish walk away he felt someone press up against his back and a hand creep around his waist. He glanced back over his shoulder and grinned easily, pressing back as he waited for Crish to return from the bar. The hand on his stomach pressed harder, holding his closer, tighter, until Blaine started to feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable. The man crowded against him, his hand sliding down Blaine’s abdomen to press against his crotch and Blaine balked, tried to break away, only for the other arm to come up across his shoulders, holding him in place, a voice in his ear whispering for him to be cool, it would be okay._

_“No,” Blaine said, bucking against the hand on his crotch, struggling as the guy lead him from the dance floor and back towards a wall already full of men with their hands all over one another, tongues busy and eyes elsewhere, and Blaine whimpered, scanning for Crish, hoping someone he knew was there and would recognise him and the trouble he already knew he was in._

_“Shh,” the man said soothingly, releasing Blaine only long enough to pin him to the wall, covering him with his own body to hold him in place. “Shh, Devon. It’s okay.”_

_“Don’t, please – I -”_

_“Shush. I’ll take care of you.”_

_“Don’t. I’m not – stop.”_

_Blaine shoved at the man’s shoulders desperately, only for him to slap his cheek sharply, snapping Blaine’s head to the left, where he locked eyes with another man (boy, really), pleading quietly for help. Blaine heard his assailant laugh as he followed his gaze, his voice friendly as he said there was nothing to worry about. He took Blaine’s hand in his and dragged him back towards the main door, and, once Blaine realised the inevitability of what was happening, he stopped fighting._

_The man dragged him across the street and into an alley, spinning him around and pinning him against the rough brickwork. Blaine could see the bottom of a fire escape, the row of dumpsters. He could still hear the steady hum of traffic on the main road not two hundred yards from him. He tried to focus on that as rough hands ripped his pants off of his hips, a heavy knee forcing his knees apart, and unskilled fingers delved into him using nothing but spit for lube. Blaine was virtually dry when he man forced his way inside. By that point, Blaine’s mind was a million miles from his body, from the dull ache in his lumbar spine, from his fingernails digging into the bricks beneath his hands. He didn’t come back until the boy from the club laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and helped him back to his feet._

_“Sorry,” he whispered against Blaine’s ear, wiping away tears Blaine didn’t even know he was crying. “I’m so sorry.”_

_“Can you – I need to go home.”_

_“You need the hospital.”_

_Blaine blanched and shook his head, tried to rebutton his pants with shaking fingers. “Just – just help me into a cab. I’ll be okay.”_

_“No. You need medical attention. We’ve got to stick together.”_

_Blaine looked him over slowly and swallowed hard. He knew he’d seen the boy before, but not where. He figured it didn’t matter much, in the long run. “Okay.”_

_Blaine remembered him staying long enough to fill in the paperwork before kissing Blaine’s cheek breezily. “I’ve got to – I can’t be caught here. Stay safe, huh? Go – Go home, Devon. I mean Ohio. Get out of the city while you’re still alive.”_

_Blaine nodded absently and said he needed coffee, glanced up and down the corridors to find a vending machine. When he looked for the boy again, he was gone. Blaine slipped away himself soon after._

...and the fallout that followed as he explained thirteen years of selling his body and tiny pieces of his soul for money, until there wasn’t much of either left to sell, and the prescription for anti-depressants and the idea of spending Memorial Day weekend in Ohio again.

It had been the terrified look on his mom’s face when she realised what he actually did for money, following a long talk over breakfast about how he planned to pay for his treatment and Blaine barking at her that he sold himself, just to make her shut up. It had been her raising the subject of Kurt and whether or not he knew that had made Blaine throw up, kneeling over the toilet bowl as the guilt crashed into him like a truck that didn’t stop.

The very worst thing about turning 29 was that it reminded him how much he missed the parents he’d had when he was 13 and, as far as they were concerned, straight. It was his mom’s cool hands on his forehead, and his dad’s voice as he drifted in and out of sleep, and the easy comfort they took in one another that Blaine had had once and thrown away. The worst thing about turning 29 was coming home and realising his parents had always loved him, even if they couldn’t understand him, even if they’d hurt him and driven him away. He almost couldn’t breathe around the thought that if he’d known all would take to get his mother back was rape, he’d have tried it when he was 15. Perhaps then he’d have been enough for Kurt from the start.

 

There’s a moment, Blaine thought to himself as he nursed another rum and coke and avoided meeting anyone’s eyes, when you can see the life you were supposed to have leaching away out of your grasp. For him, it was a chance encounter over coffee.

It was early July. He’d decided he didn’t need to see a therapist anymore, because he didn’t like what the drugs she prescribed did to his brain and he was doing just fine with a steady intake of caffeine by day to keep him from sleeping and alcohol by night to stop him dreaming. He was on his second medium drip in as many hours when the inevitable happened. As he emptied sugar sachets and cinnamon into his take out cup and wrapped a napkin round it to hold it without burning his fingers, he heard an all too familiar voice say his name with understandable incredulity, and he turned slowly to find Kurt standing behind him. Blaine fumbled for anything to say (because Kurt still had the power to take his breath away, all long limbs and tight summer weight sweaters), so he’d just stood there, opening and closing his mouth in silence once, twice, and Kurt was still smiling at him, bright blue eyes sparkling with amusement. “Hi,” Blaine managed eventually and Kurt’s smile had teeth in it as he canted his head.

“Hi.”

“Um. You’re - why are you - God, Kurt. Your face.”

Kurt actually laughed then, just like Blaine remembered it, and his hand moved to touch Blaine’s arm. The feel of Kurt touching him left Blaine desperate for everything, Kurt’s fingers stronger were than they had been when he was a teenager, and Blaine could feel himself getting lost in how it would feel for his body to mould seamlessly to Kurt’s again, until they became a single unit, moving and breathing in unison. They’d never really accomplished it when they had the chance but now that they were older and had more practice perhaps they could... Blaine thought perhaps they would fall into a natural rhythm together. He felt his breath hitch and stutter again at the thought, wanted to say he was sorry again for everything he had done to hurt Kurt then, and how he was paying for it over and over again now, but his voice was stilled in his throat by the hand that curled around Kurt’s waist. Blaine followed the tanned, toned forearm past the rolled up shirt sleeve to broad strong shoulders and on up to an open, smiling face that flicked between the two of them as it tried to piece them together. He watched as Kurt caught his lip between his teeth and finally, _finally_ , saw the rings on both their hands. He waited quietly for Kurt to introduce them and then, when Kurt still seemed struck dumb, he extended his own hand.

“Blaine,” he said “Old – God, _old_ friend.”

The other man’s handshake was firm, and his smile warm. “Jonathon,” he said, no hint of recognition for Blaine’s name on his face. Blaine couldn’t honestly say he was surprised. He wouldn’t talk about him if he were Kurt either. Kurt shouldn’t be forced to dredge up the memory of the boy who broke his heart with every new lover.

“I should – I’ll – I’m leaving,” he stuttered out, grabbing his coffee from behind him just in time to miss the flash of disappointment in Kurt’s eyes. When he turned back, Kurt had moved Jonathon’s hand from around his waist and was holding it gently in his own. Blaine nodded to himself and stepped around the two of them, swallowing his own disappointment. Of course Kurt didn’t wait for him to sort his own issues out. He shouldn’t have done either. He should be happy. He should be with someone who made him happy. He should - he should be with anyone, so long as it wasn’t Blaine because Blaine came with a side of disappointment and a lot of needs and an unhealthy dose of anger because he’d missed his one shot at romance because his body and his brain didn’t communicate properly. He leaned in briefly to kiss Kurt’s cheek and grinned as he stepped back, glancing behind him to avoid a buggy and a small dog, holding his hand to his ear. “Call me, yeah?” He was almost back at his car before it occurred to him that Kurt didn’t have his number.

There was always Facebook.

It was seeing Kurt happy, though, that had Blaine in his dad’s car driving down to Dayton. He didn’t have any plan beyond getting ridiculously drunk - drunk enough to forget about Kurt at any rate - and getting laid, but then, he hadn’t had any plans beyond that when he’d gone out for his birthday back at home either. New York home. Not the personality vacuum that was his parents’ spare room, formerly his room, in buttfuck Ohio. He rented himself a motel room with his dad’s card because - well because his dad was still making snide remarks about Blaine’s life choices, and Blaine’s orientation, and Blaine’s ‘rape’, so fuck him, he could spring for Blaine’s single night of debauchery since winding up back in Lima. He hit up a small bar in the right part of town, and found himself buying drinks for a boy who didn’t look any older than 19 but insisted he was 21, and Blaine figured he was in no position to judge when he’d done exactly the same thing far too many nights in college (and before that).

“What’s your name, honey?” he slurred eventually, and the boy had looked slightly surprised at the question. Blaine felt bad for him that no one ever asked, and then worse for himself because there were far too many men who’d come in his mouth (and throat, and hands; on his stomach, and face, and thighs) who had never asked his name either. He bought them another drink as the boy said his name was Carlos. Blaine was hazily aware of the fact that that probably wasn’t what his ID said, much less his birth certificate. But it was a name. “Do you have anywhere to go, Carlos?”

“No.”

Blaine had never felt like such a predator as when he was asking – inviting – a teenage hustler to spend the night with him. He asked the barman to give him two bottles of water and took Carlos’ hand in his own. “Come back with me,” he murmured into his ear. Carlos smiled brightly, tangling his other hand in Blaine’s shirt, swaying seductively into Blaine’s space as they stood. Blaine released him and grabbed for both bottles, motioning toward the door. The boy was far too thin, he thought objectively as he watched him leave, but at least he should be good.

 

As it turned out, Carlos was actually disappointing. He’d been impressive naked and hard and splayed against the sheets as Blaine took him apart piece by piece with his tongue and his hands. He’d assured Blaine he was clean as Blaine rolled a condom down his length, and Blaine smiled but said, peppering kisses to the boy’s inner thighs, that he wasn’t taking chances. He’d done that once too often in his life, and he wasn’t willing to take the risk again. Carlos had whined softly and then gone eerily quiet, only his fingers tangling in the loose curls of Blaine’s hair any indication that he was still alive, his hips bucking up as Blaine’s fingers teased between his legs, ghosting a pattern over his perineum, pressing spit slick against his hole without edging past the muscle, mouthing at his balls where he still tasted of boy and not latex. Blaine pulled back as he felt the boy’s muscles begin to tighten, as his hands became more insistent and the whine in his voice became more urgent, stripping the condom from him and crawling back up his body to kiss his throat, clavicle, jaw, replacing his mouth with his hand he worked him through his orgasm, sucking a mark into Carlos’ skin as he wiped come across the sheets.

It was when Carlos reached between their bodies to touch Blaine that he realised he couldn’t be there, not like that, not with a stranger, someone whose name he didn’t even really know. His whole body trembling, he pulled out of the boy’s embrace, shaking his head as he fumbled for water and his boxer briefs.

“Stay,” he whispered, as Carlos reached for his own clothes. “You should – you should stay.”

Carlos’ mouth opened to say something, but Blaine was already dragging his sweater back over his head, his skin crawling, memories of rough hands pulling him apart making him reach and stumble into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind him. There was nothing much in his stomach beside alcohol, which only burned his throat on the way back up, and all he could think was that if this had been taken away from him as well then there wasn’t much left to live for. Slouching back against the wall, Blaine buried his face in his hands and let the tears finally fall; tears for himself, for the boy he was then and the man he was now, tears for what happened to him in New York, for everything that had been taken away from him...

When the sobs broke into dry hiccups, he felt cleaner than he had in weeks. He wiped his face with his hands and drew in a steadying breath, pulled the handle to flush away alcohol and pain, and straightened his hair in the small bathroom mirror. He couldn’t make himself be happy with the idea of pills to even out his mood swings, but he could perhaps find a therapist in New York to help him deal with his problems. He could find someone back home who could help him be the man he was supposed to be, before that night when he was a kid and a pervert had paid to use his mouth and sealed his fate forever. Feeling as if he’d made some progress, Blaine stepped back into the main room, picked his pants back up from the floor where they’d been so hastily discarded in his rush to get a teenage hustler naked, and searched the pockets for his car keys. Carlos sat in the middle of the bed, his underwear back on at least, and Blaine said the room was paid for, he might as well stay.

“It’s still early,” he said. “If you’re - if you go back out, be careful.” He tossed the room key onto the bed and smiled sadly. “I wish I knew what to say to you to change your life.”

Carlos eyed him warily, and then crawled across the bed to grab for the key. “When do I need to be out?”

Blaine dropped his gaze to the floor and nodded. “Preferably by midday, but my dad’s paying the bill so I really don’t give a fuck.”

He tugged his pants over his hips and grabbed his jacket on his way out of the door, refusing to look back at the kid still kneeling provocatively in the middle of the mattress.

 

Four weeks, a triumphant return to New York (his cat reclaimed from the neighbour he’d thrust it upon when he’d left, much to the cat’s disgust and Blaine’s chagrin) and a new therapist later, Blaine decided that he liked whiskey more than he liked talking. Talking meant spending time thinking about his parents, the problems he had with his father (specifically) and his mom (a more passive aggressive topic). His therapist wanted to evaluate the turning points in his life (“I was 14 and beaten into unconscious broken submission for being queer in conservative Ohio. Then, when I was 15, a man gave me twenty bucks to let him fuck my mouth. Or, actually, I guess he gave me twenty bucks to not tell anyone he’d got me drunk and then come down the throat of a child. I’m not sure which.” Pause. “There are a lot of perverts willing to pay you to not say anything.”), and times when he could have broken the cycle (“I was 16 and he made me want to be better.”) but didn’t. Blaine didn’t enjoy the talking, but he did enjoy the catharsis he felt finally discussing his world with someone who didn’t judge him, or at least not aloud and certainly not by name. Irrespective of the relative buoyancy of bitching about his parents (“Did you know you can’t rape a man? I assume she meant a man. Maybe she meant a gay. Or a... a whore.” Blink. “I think she thinks that’s the same thing, to be honest. We’re all shameless sluts.”), without fail Blaine followed his weekly sessions with three hours in a bar two blocks from his therapist’s office, waiting for someone lonely to invite him back to their room to “see if we can’t make you smile, beautiful.”

Blaine wasn’t interested in someone trying to make him feel better that afternoon. He wanted to nurse his whiskey and wallow in the sea of nameless men he’d allowed into his body. He wasn’t ashamed of what he did, of what he’d done, but he thought there were things he would, perhaps, have done differently. (He’d have turned Eli down, for starters. He’d have explained he had a boyfriend whom he adored and that he wasn’t doing _that_ anymore. He’d have insisted on condoms more often, when it became apparent that that was _exactly_ what he did, because he knew he’d been very, very lucky. He’d have tried harder to accept Wes’ help when the offer was still there. He’d have actually talked to his hospital appointed therapist when he had his ribs, collarbone and wrist broken by the ugly bastards who had beaten a child into the ground for doing nothing beyond dancing with another boy instead of staring out the window in stony silence as he internalised all of the hate and pain he felt. The list is endless.) He was about to say as much to the figure pulling out the stool directly beside him when an altogether too familiar, too personal, voice ordered an Amaretto sour for itself, and one of whatever Blaine was nursing.

“Where’s Jonathon?” Blaine asked bitterly, downing the last of the liquid in his glass and accepting a replacement from the barman with a nod. Kurt didn’t respond for a long moment, and Blaine could see his long fingers and perfect nails playing with the edge of napkin.

“We pretend,” he said, eventually. “For my dad. He’s sick, and I think he just wants to see me happy.”

Blaine felt like such a dick. “Oh,” he said, and then, “I’m sorry. About your dad.”

“Yeah. I don’t think I actually expected to have to watch him die. It kind of sucks.”

Blaine turned his head to take in the lines of Kurt’s profile as he took a long sip of his sour, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. He wanted to reach out and touch Kurt’s hair, his cheek, but he settled for resting his hand on Kurt’s wrist, squeezing slightly. “Does he like Jonathon?”

Kurt turned his face toward the door, and Blaine could see his shoulders literally square off. “Not really. He doesn’t like anyone as much as he liked you.” A pause and then, “I guess I haven’t liked anyone as much I liked you either, though.”

Blaine choked and pulled his hand back quickly, because he wanted nothing as much as he still wanted Kurt. But that was then, and this was now, and he didn’t know how to do anything except what he did. “Kurt, I-“

“I know, Blaine,” Kurt turned back to face him, tears on his cheeks that he let Blaine brush away gently. Blaine could see it in his face and his eyes, the knowledge resting there that he still loved him, but Blaine didn’t know what the right words to say were to make the information tangible or real.

“Know what?”

“Wes sent me a link to your page.”

The bottom fell out of Blaine’s world in an instant and, as he scrabbled for the pieces, Kurt kissed his jaw. “I love you,” he said quietly, finishing his drink. Blaine didn’t have time to process the words before Kurt was on his feet and heading for the exit. When he didn’t stop to look back, Blaine figured it would be wrong to follow. He turned back his whiskey and Kurt’s frayed napkin, and added letting Kurt leave again to his mental list of things he would change if he could.

 

For a long time after that, Blaine’s life returned to relative normality. He didn’t take on new clients, but made the most of the ones he had whilst they were still willing to pay him. He met Santana for lunch when he got another email from her, saying she needed to discuss another idea with him, only for her to launch at him that she thought he would be – height aside – genetically ideal to be the biological father of her and Britt’s theoretical baby. He spent 30 minutes staring at the bottom of his glass while she talked about everything else that was happening in his life, about her work, and Blaine said nothing until she stopped, staring at him quizzically.

“I’m not expecting an answer,” she said finally, and he nodded, spine stiffening.

“I just – you pay me for sex. I’m not sure I understand why me. Why the hell would you want a guy you pay for sex to be linked to you forever?”

“Oh, honey. You were my friend long before you became an almost life-size sex toy. Besides, my skin, your hair, it would be adorable.”

“Wait, your skin? I assumed – you just – I thought Britt would-“

Santana’s smile turned sad for a moment before she shook her head. “She can’t. But she wants to, and what Britt wants, I give her.” She finished her drink and fished in her purse for her wallet. “Think about it, Blaine. Please? I can’t imagine anyone else’s child I’d want growing inside of me. You make me feel the least wretched.”

Blaine nodded and returned to staring into his glass. “How – how would it-“

“Artificially.” She smiled softly, and beckoned for a waiter, asked for the bill, and leaned across the table to squeeze Blaine’s leg.

“Okay.” He took a shaky breath and tried again with more confidence. “Okay. I’ll – I’m – okay.”

Santana’s smile only intensified. “We don’t want anything else from you Blaine. Other than this, things stay the same. I promise.”

He nodded uneasily, and flicked his gaze back out of the window. “Yeah. Well, if we’re supposed to become our parents, it’s probably best that genetics are the only thing I contribute. My mom looks good for her age. It’s a shame she’s a miserable shrew.”

“Oh, Blaine. You don’t even know how good you are, do you?”

She walked with him to the subway before pulling him into an affectionate hug. “Love you,” she whispered into his ear before stepping away, straightening the jacket of her suit and flattening her hair with her hands. “I’ll contact you with details. And Blaine?” He paused two steps down and turned back to face her, face open and smiling as he crumbled on the inside. “I need your medical history and most recent test results. No, in fact, I need new test results.” He nodded and jogged down the steps, making sure he was out of her view before letting panic flare bright inside of him. He thought, numbly, as he stepped onto his train, that maybe he’d just walked knowingly into the lion’s den.

His therapist only asked whether it was maybe what he needed to get himself out. Blaine couldn’t begin to answer that question. More than anything, he wanted to discuss the idea with Kurt. He emailed Wes instead, starting with an apology for the last ten years.

 

Blaine didn’t hear anything from Kurt again until a text notification from an unknown number flashed on his phone. He read the message slowly, and then twice more, and then gave his cat to he neighbour (“I think he likes you more anyway,” he said with an easy grin, the cat purring in the woman’s arms) before booking the first flight back to Ohio that he could get. He found himself – fifteen hours after the first message – standing in arrivals at Columbus with Tina’s arms wrapped around him, her breath warm and damp against his neck, his arms tight around her as well. Her hair was shorter than he remembered, and a lot less blue, and she was smiling through the cloying sadness.

“How is he?” Blaine asked as he pulled away, and Tina shook her head.

“Knowing it’s coming and it actually happening are different,” she said. “He says he just needs you.” Blaine swallowed the pain in his chest, and the flash of fear, because he had to be strong for Kurt. Kurt had reached out for him. Now it was Blaine’s turn to reach back.

“Does Carole know about – about Jonathon?”

Tina bobbed her head. “I think she always did, to be honest,” she said. “I think they both did.”

“And do you know about – about me?”

“Blaine.” His name sounded plaintive, the way she said it, and her mouth turned down as the threatened tears finally bubble over. He reached out to wipe them away with gentle fingers, figured she knew enough, and gestured for her to lead the way as he hoisted his bag to his shoulder. “You know,” she said quietly, palming her car keys and focussing on the ground beneath her feet, “I had the biggest, most ridiculous crush on you in high school.”

Blaine’s laughter was the first real sound he’d made since he got Tina’s text about Burt. “I didn’t know,” he said, and she glanced at him sidelong and shrugged amiably.

“Like knowing would have changed a thing.” She reached for his hand, though, and laced their fingers together. “Although I did hear about you and Santana...”

Blaine felt heat flood his face. “What? What about me and Santana?”

“The baby?” Tina’s voice slowed, pitched as though she was talking to a child. Blaine could feel his heart trying to escape his ribcage, but it calmed slowly as realisation sank in that she didn’t know that much about what he did for rent each month. “What else is there to know?”

“Nothing.” _Too fast, Blaine,_ he chastised himself mentally. _Slower_. “Nothing. I just didn’t think it was public knowledge. Who – how?”

“Brittany, mostly. She talks in her sleep, and I brought them back from here yesterday. I got your number from Santana.” Tina paused in the walk back to the car and caught Blaine’s arm, meeting his eyes. Her face was utterly sincere when she said, “I’m sorry for your loss as well, Blaine. I know Burt was like a father to you for a while.”

Blaine swallowed hard and forced a tight smile before looking past Tina’s shoulder. “More than my biological one,” he said sadly. “I just – I never said thank you. For anything.”

“You’ve come back for Kurt. You’re here for Kurt. That’s all he would have asked or wanted.”

Blaine nodded and blew a long breath out through his mouth, composing himself all over again. “Okay. I’m ready.”

 

When they got back to Lima, via three coffee shops (Blaine had insisted that Kurt wouldn’t appreciate Starbucks or the Lima Bean, so they’d had to find another independent across town to get a non-fat mocha from before Blaine would agree to move on) and a florist, the Hummel-Hudson house that Blaine remembered so well was flooded with people. He handed the flowers to Carole, who pulled him in close and hugged him exactly the way he remembered, and she directed him into the den where Kurt was curled up with videos of him and his dad. He smiled at her and she hugged him again, before moving on to deal with new arrivals.

When Blaine pushed aside the hastily hung curtain across the door of the room, all he could see was a mountain of blankets and the flickering blue light of the television screen, a tiny Kurt holding court in what Blaine could only assume was their old back yard. A woman laughed, and Kurt looked affronted as he explained again the correct way to hold a teacup to his grinning father. The screen flickered and changed to a dark haired woman with Kurt’s eyes and his pale, pale skin, and Kurt’s voice drifted from the blanket heap. “That’s my mom. I’d like to think they’re together now, but – but I don’t really believe in it. It’s just a nice thought.” His head appeared from the cocoon and he smiled unsteadily, his eyes red and his voice tired. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Tina said you asked for me. Where else would I be?”

Kurt looked about to answer when the curtain was brushed aside again in a whirlwind of Rachel Berry, who burst past Blaine and wrapped her arms around Kurt, sobbing into his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Kurt,” she wailed, every occasion an opportunity to perfect her craft, her small frame too petite to contain every one of her emotions. In some ways, she reminded Blaine of a version of his brother that was actually talented. Kurt’s hand patted her shoulder gently, his blankets falling from his shoulders.

“Hey, no. It’s okay. It’s fine,” he whispered, catching Blaine’s eye over her shoulder, mouthing for him to find Finn or Sam, or even Quinn if she was around. Blaine only had to pull back the curtain to find Kurt’s brother, though.

“Oh. Hey. Is Rach-“

Blaine gestured behind him into the low lit gloom. “Yeah. She’s smothering Kurt with the power of too many feelings. It feels familiar and comforting, somehow.”

Finn grinned at him and clapped him on the shoulder before calling for Rachel. “Rach, c’mon. Kurt wants to be alone with Blaine. We told you that.”

Rachel looked up then from Kurt’s shoulder, back at Blaine, still holding a cooling mocha in one hand. “Blaine? I didn’t – wow.” She looked back at Kurt again, a little frown between her eyebrows. “You spent freshman year moping about the boy that broke your heart, and he’s. Wow.”

Blaine knew he shouldn’t have come, but hearing Rachel actually say it hurt more than he expected. He was saved from further embarrassment by Finn, however, who stepped past him and gathered Rachel in his arms, tugging her bodily from Kurt’s side. “Kurt wants him here,” he repeated, holding a hand over her mouth as she opened it again to voice her opinion on exactly why Kurt shouldn’t be trusted to make sound judgements in his state of mind, releasing her only as the curtain dropped behind him, just in time for him to hear Rachel mutter something to Finn about Kurt associating with street walkers now, and he stepped further into the room.

“I got you – it’s probably cold by now. But I figured you could use coffee. And someone who won’t judge you for wallowing.”

“I’m not wallowing,” Kurt murmured, patting the couch for Blaine to come sit beside him, accepting the coffee as he obeyed. “I’m – okay, I might be wallowing. I’m 30 and I’m an orphan.”

“You’re a successful actor whose dad has died,” Blaine amended, wrapping an arm around Kurt’s shoulders, and jumping back when Finn reappeared in the doorway.

“Mom says she needs the den,” he said, and Kurt glanced at him, nodding.

“Okay, sure. I’m done anyway.”

Finn disappeared again, dropping the curtain and cutting out some of the noise, and Kurt leaned his head against Blaine’s shoulder. “It’s only been a couple of days,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure how to do this without him.”

“Drink your coffee,” Blaine murmured into his hair, kissing the top of his head, “And we’ll go somewhere quieter. Somewhere we can close the world outside. You can tell me about your dad.”

“He adored you,” Kurt sighed, downing the coffee almost in one. “When he first got ill, he said the one thing that would cripple me is letting the things I love slip away. So I hung on so tight to everything. And I let you go.”

“Yeah, well. I hurt you. I hurt you the most.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Blaine frowned and Kurt pulled back to cup his face with both hands, kissing him softly. “Blaine, you’ve hurt _yourself_ most of all.”

Blaine didn’t say anything more, only watched as Kurt shucked his blanket cocoon, revealing dove grey yoga pants that encased his long legs perfectly, his shoulders broad and perfectly filling out the dusty pink t-shirt he had on top. He held out his hand for Blaine to take and lead him quietly up the stairs to his room.

 

This is how Blaine finds himself lying on Kurt’s bed with his head pillowed on Kurt’s stomach, staring up at the ceiling as Kurt’s fingers card through his hair, explaining that he doesn’t use the word “whore”. His therapist (“Yes, I have a therapist. Shut up.”) says he can’t change if he doesn’t change his perception of himself, or some kind of new age hippy shit like that. Kurt’s laugh is soft but he doesn’t really mind. He can feel the ache of Kurt inside of him spreading through him, making him whole again, and this time he wants to hold onto it forever. He knows it won’t last, though, that there will always be others, that he can’t be what Kurt needs him to be now (complete, unsullied, innocent, and brave, and strong), but he wants to try. He blinks back tears and swallows the block that forms in his throat when he tries to speak again.

“I never wanted you to know,” he says slowly, softly, when the words finally form, and Kurt’s fingers stop, move to press against his lips.

“Shh,” he murmurs, breathing in the silence. “It doesn’t matter. There’s a moment and we missed it. But we’re here now.”

Blaine nods and rolls onto his side, presses a kiss to Kurt’s chest above his heart. “You made me want to be better, for a while. But when you left, I didn’t – I didn’t know how to be the boy you made me without you there.”

“Blaine, stop. I love you. I will always love you.”

“But we both know I’m not what you need?”

Kurt swats at his shoulder, but his laugh is lyrical and Blaine’s smile reaches his eyes. “Fuck you,” he says quietly, and Blaine heaves himself upright.

“I’m sorry about your dad as well. And I’m sorry Jonathon isn’t real. And I wish – God, Kurt. I wish we’d met when I was 15, because I could have used you showing me that gay didn’t have to mean hurting myself like I did.”

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

Blaine nods and presses a kiss to Kurt’s temple. “When are you going home?”

“As soon as I’ve helped Carole settle everything. I’ll call you when I get back. I don’t want us to drift again.”

Blaine smiles and leans off of the bed to grab for his jeans and his phone. “Tell me your number. I don’t want us to miss either.”

He thinks, quietly, that Kurt’s face is luminous as he reels off the digits. He snaps a quick picture of the man Kurt has become, dishevelled and well fucked and fucking _glowing_ , before curling into his side again. “Love you,” he says softly, and Kurt’s hand comes to rest softly on his spine, rubbing lazy circles into his shoulder.

“Love you more.”

It’s not perfect, but, for the first time in almost half his life, Blaine lets himself believe that it could be.

 

**FIN**


End file.
